At this particular moment in time I have, amazingly to me, 4513 Facebook friends. After viewingThe Social Network for the latest Poliwood on PJTV, I wondered again what that really meant. I know it’s a macabre thought, but what if all those people showed for my funeral? I better start saving for the catering now, or — forget any piddling post-death tax estate — I’m going to leave my family with a due bill double the cost of a fleet of 7-series BMWs.

Of course, we all know that Facebook friends aren’t likely to show for a funeral. They aren’t really friends — not in the way we grew up knowing about genuine friends, what few we had. I had about two in high school, maybe jumped to four in college, and considered myself lucky. But we now live in an era of virtual friends and have scads of them. What are they really?

This is one of the issues raised by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin in his semi-biopic of young Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder. I think Sorkin is somewhat more cynical about the possibilities of virtual friendship than I am. He’s been a busy guy and perhaps hasn’t had the experience with the online community that I have. Seen from afar, it’s easy to draw the conclusion that online relationships are a symptom of modern anomie, alienation, etc. — geeks flailing away on their keyboards in the middle of the night, texting someone they never met (and never will) three continents away, while trying to get the pizza gook off their monitors. And that image has some truth to it.

And yet… and yet… I like to feel like these umpteen years of blogging (well, since 2003 anyway) have not been entirely through a (pizza-stained) glass darkly. I have actually made some real life friends from it. Some of them stuck — and a few didn’t. But the whole experience did give me a different perspective watching The Social Network, adding what Woody Allen used to call, back when he was funny, a certain “heavyosity.” I had been in Silicon Valley offices similar to the ones in the movie, during the days (2005) when I was traipsing around trying to get money to start PJ Media. I have to say the film got the locations and the atmosphere pretty accurately — special kudos to director David Fincher — although it did play fast and loose with some facts, apparently.

Lionel Chetwynd and I discuss the question of what allegiance filmmakers owe to the truth, especially when it is so recent, on that new Poliwood. We invite you to have a look. But I am even more interested, at this moment, in the question of what these social networks — Facebook and Twitter — have done, what they mean to our society.

I was dragged willy-nilly into both them. I didn’t want to get involved, but as CEO of PJ Media, others “sorta kinda” made it clear to me that I “oughta” have presence in the social media for the sake of the company. So there I went on to Facebook and Twitter with the help of people working for us who knew a lot more about it than I do, still do. I hope it isn’t a shock to my Facebook friends that I am not there with an entirely open heart. This is no reflection on them whatsoever — only on me. In any case, I will shortly hit the 5000 friend max and that will be it.

Twitter, where evidently you can have unlimited “followers,” is another matter. I have already crested 5000 over there and it seems even more opaque to me than Facebook — except during the Iran demonstrations when Twitter was indispensable. During normal times, however, Twitter seems to be about people compelled to tell you about their afternoon trip to Trader Joe’s or, at best, Ron Artest’s latest adventure at an after hours dance club. Do we need to hear about that? Well, maybe, if it’s a good adventure. But only once, thank you.

The bigger problem — that Sorkin doesn’t seem to refer to in the movie, but perhaps I missed it — is that we are all now living life on overload. There’s just too much stimulation and random information, too many data points, too many cable channels. I’m an admittedly high intensity type-A personality and there’s even way too much for me. I can’t say that I need Facebook and Skype and Twitter and email and text messaging and blogging and iPhone and iPad and Bluetooth and Bluray and Netflix and Flixster and Flickr and a thousand apps and … Have I left anything out? Well, probably. At any rate, ya basta…. enough already!

Does Zen Buddhism seem appealing? A little raking of the pebbles, a few hours of sitting in the lotus position and that’s it? It does to me.

Of course, the last time I was at a Zen monastery the monks were totally wired and we traded email addresses (this was a few years back in Kyoto), so maybe there is no end to this.

We should all just put ourselves in the hands of next Mark Zuckerberg, whoever he or she is (a nine-year old billionaire?), give up on ordinary human contact, and let it ride. Meanwhile, would you be my Facebook friend? I’ll love you forever and treat you to a grande soy latte at the Starbucks of your choice. (But better hurry. There are only four hundred and eighty-seven friendships left!)

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According to the movie, Facebook started as a dating thing for college students. From Harvard, it jumped to other colleges, over to England’s Oxford and Cambridge… and then, presumably, through huge infusions of cash, to the general public. I have heard that its next jump will be India, which is, apparently, a natural for the kind of networking Facebook provides.

I find that if I want to keep up with my daughter, her children, my nephews and nieces, scattered across the North American continent, Facebook has become the preferred platform. It is no longer ‘email’, or even blogs. I also keep up with Michael Yon, ‘Blog about History’, Bill Whittle’s latest effort, Pajamas Media, Vodka Pundit, etc., a way to just look at headlines. And Twitter is, of course, completely headlines, with links to photos, etc.

What saddens me is that there is always a cost to progress. I really think there is some grand being “up there” who looks down at us and plays some sort of game where for every advance we make we are also supposed to lose something. He says, “Sir, you can text message, but you lose the thrill of actually talking to a human being. Son, you can talk to friends on Facebook or Twitter, but you lose the ability to talk to a person face to face, a skill you will need later on in life, especially in business. Madam, you can send an e-mail and get an instant electronic response, but you lose the excitement of getting an actual letter in the mail. And when was the last time you wrapped and saved a bunch of e-mails in a pink ribbon and saved them for when you were old and gray? Everything regarding technology is a compromise. Unfortunately, we seem to be removing ourselves FROM ourselves, making personal contact a rare thing these days. After all, why actually meet and talk with a person when you can just “talk” to them on Facebook?

Quill pen, not exactly, but an inkwell and dipping pen where one would choose different nibs for nuanced script in one’s letters to family and friends and each one would take on a personality of its own.

Even then there was a loss in the lack of facial and vocal expression, body language not withstanding :-), to add to the encounter.

Social media like any aspect of modern society is constantly evolving. Those with vision will find unique and important ways to use it. They once thought the car and the telephone unnecessary and an intrusion into life as well. Social media is not necessary about avoiding human contact but for many it is the only contact they have with the outside world…I am not talking about the Iranian dissidents, which their use of twitter was ingenious…I am talking about the person who is homebound, the parents of special needs children looking for support( go to http://thecoffeeklatch.com for anyone who may need support)…those trying to find support groups and situations for any myriad of issues. It also provides companies, and businesses unqiue and cost saving avenues in which to hire persons and provide new and interesting job opportunities.Something that would be very welcome in today’s economic climate.

What is important however, is that the internet does need to be watched as evidenced by the rash of cyberbullying and bullying-to-death incidents coming to light. Yes it is the parents and schools responsibility to make sure that their children are protected and taught the necessary skills but it is also society’s responsibility to create a more civil and respected boundary arena in which to use the internet as well.

The syndrome Simon describes has caused the ability to read/write prose to diminish directly with youth.
That degrades the ability to ratiocinate which, coupled with incompetent math teachers, ensures a future population of manipulatable automatons.

Congrats, America, as you did with TV, you’ve used the wonders of IT to subvert rather than foster your youth.

Pelaut is taking roughly the same line as David Riesman in The Lonely Crowd, a book that was written in collaboration with social psychologists who were ardent “progressives” and who viewed mass society as the cause of fascism. Try contrasting the Riesman/New Left line with that Hayek in The Road to Serfdom. I compared their notions of “the individual” here: http://clarespark.com/2010/10/09/david-riesman-v-friedrich-hayek/. It is not popular culture but the counter-Enlightenment propaganda of the collectivist progressives that have dumbed down youth culture and all the media of mutual enlightenment and education.

I’ve never joined Facebook or Twitter, but feel like rushing over there before your # of FB friends maxes out

Well, probably. At any rate, ya basta…. enough already!

Exactly.

All these ads saying…get this, get that delievered to your iphone… I’m already overwhelmed by information & 24/7 news.

Psychologically, wherever a person is, the immediate environment is less ‘real’ than the phone conversation he is having, the music he’s listening to, whatever he’s reading on a handheld. Texting is out of control and, in my opinion, in an unhealthy way. Elevator conversations on a cell phone are rude.

However, I do find this huge upside for some of these unprecedented modern forms of communication, especially writing on the internet…

(thou hast forgotten)…how close is the kinship between a man and the whole human race, for it is a community, not of a little blood or seed, but of intelligence.
~Marcus Aurelius

Mr. Simon, if you let me know when and where, I’ll do my best to show up at your funeral (assuming I out-live you), and I’m not even one of your Facebook friends. I would prefer, however, having lunch together some time when I’m in LA. Too bad the Chao Praya shut down.

An interesting question and one that struck a chord with me for a personal reason. Our son died earlier this year, very unexpectedly. He was definitely of the Facebook generation. Many of his friend used Facebook to share with each other, and with us, their memories of our son, and their love for him. I suspect it allowed them to share in ways that they could not have otherwise done, and I hope it was helpful for them. It was certainly helpful for us, and our other children, and some of our son’s friends who lived locally, took the many Facebook messages and created a series of storyboards from them which we had at the visitation.
I wish I had never had to experience this aspect of Facebook, but given that it happened, I would have to say this was a benefit of the system, and provided a way for his friends to share their thoughts that would not otherwise have existed. For a bit of context, our son was 21 when he died.

I’m with Mr. Nixon on this, for the same reasons. Our son, only 18 years old, died in an accident last month. His friends, mostly high school freshmen newly scattered over all of North America, used Facebook to comfort and console each other, to share their memories with each other and with us, and to say good-bye to their friend. We did exactly as Mr. Nixon did, using our son’s friends’ comments at the visitation. His friends are still posting, and we check his page every day. His sister has used Facebook to stay in touch with their mutual friends at long distances.

We, his parents, never had much use for Facebook till a few weeks ago. Now, we see a value we could never have imagined.

This brings to mind the one liner I read a while ago, wish I remembered by whom: “I don’t care who you are, you do NOT have 800 friends.”

Another amusing aspect of this is the morphing of the word “like.” Whenever I see a “Like us on Facebook” in an ad, I think of Buck Henry as the smarmy, insincerely smiling Lt. Col. Korn in the film Catch 22, telling Yossarian that he’d get everything he wanted. All he had to do was… “like us.”

I live in Northern Canada; my daughter, in North British Columbia; her cousin, in Oakland, California; and another cousin, in Toronto, Ontario. I have discovered that a friend that had disappeared from my ken, has cancer, and is home from treatment. So, I contribute hardly anything, and the comments are more like telegrams than anything else, at least I can keep track of a lot of items.

My daughter makes totally lovely pictures which she puts up at FB. Her cousin in Toronto, a professional photographer, did a ‘gig’ with Justin Bieber. Sorry, you are not my ‘friends’ so you can’t see those pictures. That darn exclusivity! Zuckerberg had a point there, to enable ‘exclusivity’, though. I don’t know anything about MySpace. Did it have this ‘exclusivity’ feature???

I’ve been “social networking” for about 12 years now, beginning with the older “chat rooms” and moving up through Instant Messenger and now Facebook. I keep up with my classmates from high school, people I’ve worked with in the Air Force over my 26-year career, and people I’ve met either online or in person. I’m a friend of yours, Roger, and if able, would go to your funeral. I’d probably be more likely to “attend” online. I’ve managed to attend one prior funeral online, and two weddings. I’d never have made either one of those in person. I think how people use any or all social networking capabilities depends upon the individual. They can either expand our world to include far more than we would ever have been able to do in person, or shrink it down to a computer screen. I’d like to think I’m the former type of person, rather than the latter. I’ve also met quite a few of my online friends in person, and enjoy them very much – just as I do their online personality.

Maybe I’m going about this all wrong, but the only “friends” I have on Facebook ARE REAL friends, and family. People that I have indeed, “broken bread with” or otherwise could not only identify them by their voice, I can usually still pick them out of a crowd at the airport.

Nice things, photos of people you really have not been in the same room with for a decade, but still sent ‘dumb’ email jokes, Christmas cards and would send flowers for occasions grand (engagement/marriage of child) and sad (death in the family).

It a matter of discrimination, there I said it. If I ‘do not really know you,’ I will not “just friend you” on a social networking site.

I joined facebook in order to keep up with my teenaged kids. I did so after my kids told me their cousin got married and they found out through a facebook update. I have ‘friended’ many of my children’s friends. It helps me to see what they are like and what they are up to.

I also post many links to informative blogs like Pajamas Media sites and Karl Denninger’s Market Ticker. I hope to be a source of information for these young people. They certainly aren’t getting this info in school or in the mass media. I am not sure how many of these kids follow through on the links, but at least there is a shot of them being exposed to facts and stories they may never hear about otherwise.

About five years ago, or nearly six, one Robert Smith passed away at the age of 54.

His funeral was attended by no less than ten of his “friends” from the ‘net, most having driven some considerable distance to be there. Not to mention the multiple dozens of lifetime friends and family at his services.

Though most of these ten or more had previously met him in the corpreal world, they’d all come to know him intially, through the good graces of the ‘net.

Rob was one of Instapundit’s earlier “blogsons”, and he was one of the most inspired, controversial and notable writers yet to appear online. He did not then, and has now, no equal.

So yes, your funeral may be attended by more than a few “friends”. But, only if you, in in the meanwhile, make it worth their while.

You’re a great political writer, Mr. Simon. One of the best. But you’ve yet to sitr the passions and friendships of such as Mr. Smith. Step it up a few notches, let slip the dogs of war, as it were, and unleash your keyboard with all of the passion, vitriol and focused fury which I’ve not doubt you keep inside.

Peruse his archives, if you will, and learn. Yes, he’ll piss you off, but that’s the point.

He drew out the passions (inluding friendships) of his readers. You sir, pale, only piquing the interests of our intellect.

Such is the difference of making only ripples in the water, or of leaving an unfillable hole in the wake of where you used to be.

And you can post things so easily onto Facebook. I could post this article of yours, Roger, onto my own Facebook page (and thus share it with my very small circle of friends), by clicking “fb” at the top of this page!

And, since it is Thanksgiving in Canada, I must share the following, which I came upon via ‘neatorama’, and then, via my niece, found that the young dancers are at some corner in Oakland. The dance is magnificent. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZjtUaQ9NMk

“What would you have me do? Be a buffoon in the
Vile hope of teasing out a smile on some cold face?
“Eat a toad for breakfast every morning? Make my knees
Callous, and cultivate a supple spine?
No, thank you!

“Wear out my belly, grovelling in the dust?
Scratch the back of any swine that roots up gold for me?
No, thank you!

“Labor night and day to build a reputation upon one song,
Never to write another?
Seek introductions, favors, influences?
“No I thank you! And again, I thank you!

“Watching others making friends everywhere
as a dog makes friends;
“I mark the manner of these Canine Courtesies,
And think: “My friends are of a cleaner breed;
Here comes — Thank God! — another enemy!”

See the original Stanley Kramer production with Jose Ferrar… Don’t give a single glance toward the trash production with Gerard Depardieu.

I think Facebook, and things like it, does engender a goodly amount of superficiality. To label the hundreds or thousands of people on your Friends list as “Friends” makes that self evident. Whether people understand what true friends are would make for an interesting book or essay. I do know that on numerous occassions I have received and accepted a friend request from someone I in fact knew, may have actually be friends with but fallen out of touch, written them a email trying to open a correspondence, and then heard nothing back.

I just deleted a couple of people from my “Friends” for just that reason, assuming that if they can’t be bothered to correspond when its a few key presses and a click away, then they are not worth your time.

It would be more proper to have a “Friends” and “Associations” list, but even sorting things out like that may not be the real problem. I think the worst part of it is that even true friendships can evolve into bad simulations if we leave our contacts to digital blurbs. We pretend that sending out updates on what we are doing is really keeping in touch, and that short comments back and forth can substitute for getting together face to face, hanging out, and, you know, actually socializing.

Bottom line, like with all other kinds of technology, it is it not good or bad, but rather how we use it that determines its worth or harm. It all comes back to us. Having a wide social network for all manner of reasons is not inherently a bad thing, but imagining it replaces actual friendships certainly will do long term harm.